Brazilian cheese among world’s top 12 in French competition
The Mondial du Fromage et des Produits Laitiers Tours, in France, awarded Brazil 81 medals in this year’s edition. The country won 17 gold, 23 silver, and 41 bronze medals. In the previous edition, back in 2021, the Latin American nation won 57 medals. The competition, held in September, takes place every two years in Tours, in the Loire Valley.
In all, 1,640 types of cheese from various countries were evaluated, of which 288 were presented by 91 Brazilian producers from 12 states. Of the 17 gold medals, ten went to producers from Minas Gerais.
Of the gold medal–winning cheeses, the competition also selected the 12 best in the world in the Super Gold category. The only non-European product was Caprinus do Lago, which came seventh, produced by Fabrício Le Draper Vieira at Capril do Lago in Valença, a municipality in the southern region of Rio de Janeiro state. France won 10 of these medals, and Switzerland one.
In an interview with Agência Brasil, the producer revealed that this was the first time he had won gold in a world cheese competition abroad. His products also won a bronze medal for the cow's milk cheese with paprika on the cover called Destino, after the village where his father was born.
Waitlist
Caprinus do Lago is a semi-cooked pressed cheese made from raw goat’s milk. “It takes a year to be ready. We have to turn it over and brush it every day. It takes 17 liters of milk to make one kilo of cheese. This cheese is produced twice a week, even though it takes a year to make. We make a five-kilo cheese.”
Vieira says there are more than a thousand people waiting in line to buy the product, adding that the waiting period usually lasts a year. “We didn’t expect such an impact.”
Despite the high demand, he does not intend to increase production, but to maintain the quality of the product. “I want it to be an exclusive, premium product that people have to wait to taste.” Another detail is that he does not sell the whole five kilos of cheese to just one person: “I’d rather send a piece to 20 people than a whole piece to just one person.”
Fabrício Le Draper Vieira has been tasting the Super Gold cheese at the bistro he runs at Capril. “If someone goes there to have lunch or dinner with us, I let them taste the cheese, but only there. It’s also a way of monetizing a little and making the project viable, which is not yet self-sustaining. It’s an investment project, because I’ve been making cheese here since the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s very little time. I make my living from dentistry. I’m a dentist.”
Passion
Born into a family of 38 dentists, Vieira has a solid career in the field. Last year, he was hailed among the 100 best dentists in a list from an international association for the category. The secret to his success in both cheese production and dentistry, he believes, is passion. In his view, everything done passionately thrives.
His taste for cheese and goats came about when he was 12 years old. He asked his father for a cow, but realized he would not be able to get milk out of such a tall animal. Then, at a farming exhibition, he met a dairy goat and fell in love with it. “It was passion at first sight. [The goats] were beautiful and of a size that I could handle.”
